


Blood Is Thicker

by turduckenail



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Blood, Danny gets hurt and Jazz patches him up, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I mean maybe mild? I've got a high tolerance for that so idk my dude, Just lots of sibling bonding, Mild Gore, Par for the course for this fandom really, Sibling Bonding, Stitches, There's no on screen violence though, tread with caution if you're squeamish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 16:05:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13527777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turduckenail/pseuds/turduckenail
Summary: The Fenton siblings have always looked out for each other.





	Blood Is Thicker

**Author's Note:**

> Quick trigger warnings for blood (technically ectoplasm), open wounds, and the stitching up of those wounds. Tread carefully.
> 
> This is sort of an experiment in writing present-tense that I did a couple nights ago instead of sleeping, so if I messed up the tenses anywhere please let me know!
> 
> The title and inspiration for this fic are from the song Hey Brother by Avicii. Definitely go listen to it, it's the unofficial/totally official theme song for this fic and I highly recommend.

The bathroom tiles are bathed in an ethereal green glow when Jazz opens the door. It's three o' clock in the morning, way too early for her to be awake, but she's pretty sure she'd heard Danny come home and, well. When your brother has a tendency to be gone for most of the night and come back battered and bloody in the early morning, you learn to be a light sleeper. Or at least you did if you were Jazz Fenton.

She sees Danny sitting on the edge of the bathtub, one side of his suit stained green by his own faintly glowing ectoplasm. There's a first aid kit lying open next to him, and he's holding a sewing needle in his hand. His eyes are glazed and unfocused as he tries to thread it.

Jazz closes the door behind her with a quiet click, and Danny's head snaps up to face her. His shoulders relax and he smiles sheepishly when he recognizes her. He's not fast enough to hide the split second of panic that overtakes him.

Seeing it breaks her heart.

Most would pass it off as lingering adrenaline and paranoia from a recent fight. Maybe Danny's expecting his opponent to come back for round two before he's had a chance to recover. Jazz, however, knows that the Fenton home is an impenetrable fortress to all but the most powerful of ghosts, and she knows that Danny knows this too. He's not afraid of a ghost sneaking up on him, he's afraid of being caught by something a little closer to home.

His fears aren't unfounded, but Jazz is pretty sure if their parents can both sleep soundly despite their dad's snoring, they won't notice the faint hum of the ghost shields as Danny sneaks in.

"Hey, Jazz." He gestures vaguely with the sewing needle in his hands. "I'll be out of here in a second if you need to-"

Jazz cuts him off with a dismissive hand wave. "It's fine, I was just making sure you were okay." She sits down next to him, feeling the cold porcelain of the tub chill her skin. Being this close to Danny in his ghost form is making her breath fog, but she doesn't move away. "Who was it this time?"

Danny shrugs with one shoulder. "Skulker. He got some new gear. No big deal."

She sighs deeply. "Danny..."

"What, it's not like I haven't survived worse," he says.

"You're sitting in a pool of your own blood, Danny! Just because you've survived worse doesn't mean this isn't a big deal!"

Danny flinches back as she raises her voice, and her anger immediately calms, replaced by a deep ache in her chest. "Don't- just. Never mind." She reaches up to rub at her eyes and stops herself just in time. Her hand already has a layer of ectoplasm covering it, just from resting on the edge of the bathtub next to Danny. Jazz flicks it off into the tub and lets it splatter against the bottom. She'll clean it up later.

They lapse into silence. It's late - early - and Jazz's head is full of fog. Danny must feel worse, he probably hasn't slept at all.

There's a beat, and Danny finishes threading the needle, then goes back to patching himself up. He pokes at the edge of a hole in his suit and hisses in pain.

Jazz frowns. "How big is that gash? I can't see past all the ectoplasm."

He hesitates, then says "It's not that bad," which honestly scares Jazz more than anything.

"Danny, tell me how bad it is."

He's quiet for a moment. "It's... it's pretty bad."

"Show me," she says.

Danny traces his finger around the edge of the hole in his suit. It stretches across the side of his ribs down to his hip.

For just a second, she forgets to breathe. She'd been hoping that it was just ectoplasm streaked over his skin making the wound look worse than it actually is. No such luck, then.

"Okay..." She takes a breath, deep and shuddering. "Okay. Give me the needle, I'll stitch you up."

He frowns. "Jazz-"

"I have steadier hands than you and there's no way you can see most of this well enough to put in the stitches yourself."

Danny pauses, then smiles weakly as he passes her the needle. "I hate it when you use logic against me."

"One of us has to have a good head on our shoulders, and since you weren't stepping up to the plate..."

"That was one time!"

"You had to wear turtlenecks and scarves for a week to hide the stitches, and that was only  _after_ you stopped trying to hold your head on with _duct tape_ , you deserve a bit of teasing about it."

Danny winces as Jazz makes the first stitch, but doesn't otherwise move. "You're never gonna let me live that down, are you?"

"Nope." Jazz feels a bit weird cracking a grin while her hands are slick with the ectoplasm still steadily seeping out of Danny's side, but if the jokes help distract him from the pain, she's willing to suffer the uncomfortable juxtaposition.

They talk for a while after that. She couldn't tell you what they'd talked about if you'd asked her after the fact, she'd stopped paying attention to what was being said after a while. The ectoplasm is cold and slick. It seeps between her fingers and flows in rivulets down her wrist to drip onto the floor below, leaving a cold feeling like peppermint in its wake, and the smell of burnt ozone hanging in the air. Some of it, the parts still caught in the magnetic pull of Danny's core, creep up her fingers in an attempt to rejoin the whole. If she occasionally angles her hand so that it had an easier time of it, Danny has the good grace not to mention it.

Eventually they run out of things to say, or maybe they are both feeling the effects of the late-early hour. Either way, they fall into silence, punctuated sometimes by a pained hiss and a murmured apology.

Jazz pulls the last stitch closed and Danny hands her a roll of bandages and some gauze from the first aid kit. A patch of bioluminescent green stains through the dressing almost as soon as Jazz finishes wrapping it around his torso, but there's not much else to be done. Danny's natural healing processes would have to take it from here.

"Come on, let's get you to bed."

He nods and meekly follows her to his room. His eyes are rimmed with dark circles, a combination of blood loss and lack of sleep sapping his energy.

Jazz frowns, making a note to pack him a lunch in the morning that's heavy on carbs. They probably have some leftover ham she could throw in to give him a bit of an iron boost. In the morning, though.

Danny collapses onto his mattress without ceremony, and she pulls his blankets over him. His breathing is already evening out as he drifts off. Jazz rests her hand on his head for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, just to assure herself that he's still breathing, that he would keep breathing until morning.

The clock on his bedside table ticks over to 4:27, and Jazz lets out a breath.

"Goodnight, little brother," she whispers. She smooths his hair away from his face, then pads out of his room, leaving the door barely open behind her.  


**Author's Note:**

> Don't forget to leave kudos/comment, and as always, you can find me over on Tumblr @turduckenail.


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